Academic lifestyle: AI tools

Self-tutoring about the academic lifestyle: the tutor mentions some ideas about AI tools.

I’ve been late to the party when it comes to using AI tools. Today, I sat down to a computer to find one open. “Ask me anything,” it said, so I asked it why mammoths went extinct.

An obvious advantage of AI tools is that they can survey numerous sources, so develop an overview, in a much shorter time than a human can. However, they have their limitations, which the two I used today both admit.

One of them typically gave me, at the end of its answer, some advice like “be skeptical of anything that doesn’t come from a trusted authority….” This prompted me to ask it where it gets its information. I was impressed when, while explaining, it gave me some attitude. Therein, it mentioned that it doesn’t have real-time capabilities, which I found hard to believe. To dispel my doubts I asked it the time in LA, which it apologetically admitted not to know. It did give me some ways to find out, though.

By way of comparison, I asked the other AI tool the current time, and it gave me a time from last Sunday. I imagine that’s when last it polled what it considers a source for the time; nonetheless, the day of this event is Tuesday.

These AI tools are remarkable for their speed of content generation, but I can imagine being able to detect content as being from one of them.